CalArti

Summer moves along at its appointed pace. A couple weeks without rain the fields begin to ripen and are tinged with brown. The tall grass quickly turns from green to yellow to brown. Wild strawberry goes red and brown, prickly leaves wilting close to the soil. Looking through the finder of my camera I see red dragonflies with brown backgrounds, where just a few short weeks ago I saw gold or blue dragons with a green backdrop.

I drove into the Allegan Forest with every intent of visiting the logged fields, but on this morning I decide to take an alternative route, and instead of travelling through Otsego and Allegan, I instead headed through Alamo, Gobles, and d Bloomington, to come upon the game area from the south. This route takes you along the back roads (in an area where all of the roads are more or less back roads). Going north on 48th Street I see a little field that I have visited a few times in the past, and realize that it has more or less escaped being logged.

I pulled into the little parking area. Lots of new tree stumps, branches, and piles of wood chips block the parking are off from the rest of the field – new evidence of some logging activity. As I walk into the field I see some deep ruts in the sandy soil, a few bare patches and piles of wood chips, and one rather small pile of branches – maybe about the size of a typical two car garage – that is on top of much older pile of branches left years ago. Overall, the area is still relatively undisturbed.

And so, let’s see what dragonflies are here…

The autumn meadowhawks are making themselves known, but the red meadowhawks of high summer are still the most abundant. Here’s a red Meadowhawk sitting on a dried knapweed bloom, which seems to be lit up before him:

And here is another red Meadowhawk, on another knapweed bloom, with the olive green / brownish fields making a backdrop:

Of course, dragonflies aren’t the only insects of in the late summer field. As always, the American Copper Butterflies – tiny things about the size of a dime – are especially abundant. Here’s one perched on a dried leaf, guarding its tiny kingdom.

Butterflies are not rare in the game area, but I honestly see few monarchs or giant swallowtails in any one place. From time to time, I’ll see spicebush swallowtails in a few numbers, but here in this field this morning I saw many monarchs and quite a few giant swallowtails. The giants managed to elude me, but here are a few shots of the monarchs:

It was a nice Saturday morning in the fields. I never got out of that first field I visited, and never made it to the logged field. I used up my allotted time in this one small field – something I have no complaint about – and drove back south in the early afternoon to retrace my route back home. I thought I had some nice shots of the monarchs and dragons but, meh, a few images that are at best competent is all I found when I downloaded the memory cards. Oh well – it was a nice morning in the wilds.

Here is a parting shot of an autumn Meadowhawk sitting on a pale plant whose name I either do not know or cannot remember, though it is quite popular with the butterflies.

After shooting Amber Meadowhawks in the Allegan Forest on Saturday, I ventured back to the same area last Sunday. The weather was changing – it was hot, cloudy, and rain threatened. This weather pattern would persist all week, with some near record high days and extremes of humidity.

Sunday, in the dull light under an overcast sky, was not a great day for shooting. I wound up pushing the ISO setting to 800 and dimming the fill flash as much as possible to keep the shots form taking on a flashed look. I did manage to get a few shots of truly red Meadowhawks, and they are shown below:

The area I was working in also had a nice patch of milkweed, and it was teeming with lots of Monarch Butterflies. Here is one, sipping on a Knapweed flower:

I finally ventured back into the forest today, a week later. Last week’s wild weather, with frequent intense thunderstorms and downpours, had left its mark on the forest and several roads were washed out or flooded. My goals were to get a shot of a mature male blue dasher (before they disappear for the season) and also to get a few more Meadowhawks. I really miss the loss of the fields off 46th steet, which used to be the most lucrative hunting grounds for all sorts of meadowhawks.

At any rate – I had not luck with the Blue Dasher – didn’t see a single one, male, female, mature or juvenile. I did see a couple of brilliant red Meadowhawks, but only managed these two photos of a female (or immature) specimen and a one male on his way to getting truly red.

I was fortunate, however, to see and photograph an Eastern Amberwing, a species I seldom encounter. These are quite small – smaller than even the Band Winged Meadowhawks – and can be a challenge to photograph as you have to get very close to fill the frame. Here are a few shots:

There is a great post on Urban Dragon Hunters about identifying odonates from photos. Long story short – it can be very difficult if not impossible to come up with an accurate ID based on a photo. The article also touches on the internet effect off misidentifications – where one misidentified photo leads to the misidentification of another, and so on, until everything is jumbled up. This article echos a little insert called “Identifying Meadowhawks” in Stokes Beginner’s Guide to Dragonflies that makes the same points. But, alas, I feel foolish if I can’t offer some ID to accompany the photos… and so foolishly try to ID my photos when it really is impossible. So in the future you may find more identifications that only penetrate to the genus or even family level.

Except… that is… when a nice, unequivocal specimen presents itself. Here are a some shots of a band-Winged Meadowhawk, Sympetrum semicinctum. Between its diminutive size and distinctive wing coloration, there’s no mistaking this one. In Dragonflies of the North Woods, Kurt Mead notes this under the heading Similar Species: “None.”

Ok – I’m on firm ground.

These photos were taken on Saturday, July 17, in a nice field in the Allegan Forest, off 44th Street between 115th and 112th Avenues. It was a hot day and the little dragonfly was in the obelisk position – minimizing his body’s exposure to the sun.

The shot above was taken at f16 to maximize depth of field. That made the dragon’s abdomen and winds a little sharper, but also made the background a bit less creamy and a little curdled looking. However, I like the nice separation between the wings.

And lastly, one more shot of another Band Winged Meadowhawk form the same day and field (it was full of them), this one is a less dramatic pose:

Here are a few photos of dragonflies, shot this past weekend in the Allegan Forest.

You know it’s summer when the Red Meadowhawks arrived. I was working the fields off 125th Avenue, north of the river, without much luck Sunday morning. I wandered along the edge of the forest, and spotted this specimen sitting on a twig, with the sun dappled woods in the background. It clearly is a Meadowhawk of some sort, on its way to vibrant red colors:

After that, I wandered around the forest’s edge a little more. I saw several Meadowhawks, none bright red yet but a few starting to change. Here is another immature individual:

After that I hit some back fields off 46th Street. The little shanty that was there is now gone. I wandered around a bit and found a lone Blue Dasher – possibly a mature female, maybe an immature specimen. Regardless – it liked posing! All of these shots are the same individual:

Lastly, on Saturday morning I drove by a field off 115th Ave, between 44th and 42nd streets. It’s one of those places where I don’t expect to see dragonflies, but sometimes am pleasantly surprised. On both Saturday and again on Sunday the field had a good number of Calico Pennants and Halloween Pennants, with the Calico’s being the more numerous.

Calico Pennants are a smaller dragonfly, so you have to get closer to get a nice shot. They also seem to be more skittish than other species – like Halloween Pennants or Blue Dashers – but maybe they just seem to be that way because I’m trying to get so close. The Calico’s do seem to try to perch on flimsy blades of grass and other plant stems that bob and weave in the wind – making the dragonflies flit from one unsuitable perch to another. Other species seem more adept at picking studier perches – assuming, of course, that is what they intend.

Another female Calico Pennant - the few males who were present managed to elude me, despite more time than I should admit spent chasing them.

lastly - a mating pair of Robber Flies. It looks like they are stuck in a spider web - they catually were hanging in it. But when they decided to leave they just flew off, ripping the web apart:

Thursday afternoon. As I walk across a parking lot, a dot tailed whiteface dragonfly darts it front of me. He land on a bright yellow parking line – fully mature, with an ebony body, one vibrant yellow dot on his tail, and a face as white as snow. I bent down to look at him, but he dashed off to the next yellow line. As I approached he dashed off once more – again to the next yellow line. And so we traversed the parking lot.

I haven’t seen many dragons this spring, so Sunday morning I went to the McClendon Trails to do something about that. The grass trails are built up around a well field that provides municipal water. It is ideal Odonate habitat- clean spring fed streams spill into a large shallow marsh, surrounded by acres of open grassland.

It was cool when I arrived – temperatures around 55F – but shortly after getting to the trails I was greeted by this Common Baskettail:

Common Baskettail Dragonfly

Common Baskettail Dragonfly

That was a nice start, but thing slowed down for a while. The next hour brought few dragonflies, though I wandered by the creek and marsh and observed numerous Crescentspot and Red Admiral butterflies. As the temperatures rose, a few damselflies became active, and I managed to get this shot of a an Eastern Forktail:

Eastern Forktail Damselfly

That was shot on the edge of a small wooded area – old apple trees mixed with scruffy pines and maples, remnants of the farm that once was there. A small clearing a few yards away provided the next opportunities – here’s a Four Spotted Skimmer, a species that is considered quite common but that I rarely see:

Four Spotted Skimmer Dragonfly

I’m a little disappointed in that shot - I had high hopes for it as I pressed the shutter button. Aside from the partially missing leg (something not obvious in the camera finder) I managed to clip just the tip of the wing in this exposure, which turns out to be the only really sharp shot of this subject. (It was bouncing around in the breeze.) Oh well – it’s a not a bad start for the season.

Following that, I encountered this last dragon of the day – I’m not sure what it is. The gap between the eyes suggests a Clubtail – family Gomphidae – but otherwise my field guides come up dry. The yellow marking on the second segment of all 6 legs is particularly distinctive.

Unidentified Gomphidae

Dragonfly season has begun – belatedly this year, but it is here now. More shots to come in the weeks ahead.

Visiting the Allegan Forest a couple of weeks ago, I wandered through a field just starting to turn green. It’s a place where RV’s congregate during deer season, and the remnants of campfires dot the landscape. The cold, black scars were a flutter with dancing spots of blue - spring azure butterflies coming to suck up the minerals and nutrients found in the charred wood.

And so a photo of a spring azure, taken April 10, 2010.

It’s a tradition, I guess. If one person alone can have a tradition. Each spring I try to get a photo of a honey bee in a crocus flower. Sometimes it works out… sometimes not.

This spring presented me with a narrow window of opportunity. This spring is robust and early, and the crocuses bloomed all at once in mid March, in response to several days of mild weather. But as the flowers were out in their peak, a cold snap, heavy frost, and a bit of wet snow wiped them out. They came and they went all in a matter of days.

I spent only one session out in the lawn, chasing honey bees. This shot is passable, but not great:

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And along came a fly, and perhaps I did a bit better, capturing it in all its putrid glory:

Well, that officially kicks off the insect phtography season for another year… The dragonflies can’t be far off.

I’ve been remiss in posting snow crystal photos here, so here’s a quick roundup of some of the better shots so far from this winter.

I just prepped the raw file for this one today, so it is my current favorite:

The red filter came through more as a red spatter on that photo.

The aperture blades jammed on the trusty old Pentax M50 f4 macro lens that I use for these shots, and in the thick of shooting last week I switched over to an M50 f 2.0 - a lens considered to be relatively unremarkable. As you can see by the shot above, it holds its own regarding sharpness. (I have since found the adapter ring that is needed to use a Sigma 50mm EX macro on the setup, and will be using that in the future.)

I’ve made several changes to the technique for shooting these. First off, I’ve finally ditched my old Pentax *ist-D and started using the newer Pentax K7 for these shots. The drawback is that it does not suppport TTL autoflash. It’s not a big deal to shoot with manual flash with the histogram etc.

Here’s another recent shot:

I’ve been using a red and blue ‘filter’ (actually just the clear plastic covers from holidy LED bulbs) on the flash. In the photo above the two colors blended together to make a more or less purple tone. Here are a two examples of where the colors remained distinct:

Here’s an earlier shot where the colors melded nicely:

In this case, the snow crystal landed on its side. It was tiny, but I liked how it suggested a side view of a falling crystal - a little negative space on the top and there you go:

The snow has been uncooperative for most of this winter. It has snowed relatively little for Michigan - it all seems to be falling in the mid-Atlantic this winter. When it does fall it is often opaque and fluffy - I call it effervescent. The opaque parts look fluffy white when viewed in daylight, but come out dark when backlit:

And lastly - just a couple of garden variety snow crystals:

It it snows more I’ll try to take more photos, and if successful I’ll post them here.

Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.

The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.

– Tao Te Ching

Saturday, December 19, 2009. In the small hours of the morning snow falls gently to the ground. I wake up, watch, doze back off. The shiny black streets and sidewalks tell me that it’s too warm for snow crystal photos. Maybe later, maybe in the morning, maybe in dreamland.

In the morning a thin layer of crusty snow and ice rests atop automobiles and cold garage roofs. The gentle snow persists – why not try, just a few photos…

Here’s the best of a very brief excursion – and I like it. I think it is one of the best photos I’ve made all year, and I say that in December. And I like it because it is unlike anything I have ever seen before, or done before. It is a one drop oasis in the vast desert of sameness – and yep, my photos – so many of them – are right out there in the badlands. Sometime a drop of water is more refreshing than you expect.

A lightly different take on the photo can be found at the Story of Snow blog.

When I hold a camera in my hands I feel like I am in possession of key that can open up the wonders of the world. I feel all the more like that when there is something special, different, unusual and ephemeral about that key.

This summer I broke out a few of my last rolls of Kodak High Speed Infrared film. 35mm black and white film loaded into a glorious old Pentax LX – if ever there was a key capable of tumbling the barrels of the most obscure lock, this is it…

Oh well – not much to show for it. A stunted, shot up tree out standing in a scrubby field that I visit all too often.

To me the key might be an old camera loaded with expiring and extinct film. For others it might be the latest wonder digital camera and the uber-fabulous long lens. But in photography, keys are ever more available. And once you have that dream-bag full of keys, the real work begins: finding the locks…